


It's Hard Not To Hate

by facemanpeck



Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-11
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 21:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facemanpeck/pseuds/facemanpeck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is not destined to play out all the same mistakes his Father and Grandfather did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Hard Not To Hate

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to "House of the Rising Sun" and "Someday Never Comes" from the Sons soundtrack on a loop while I wrote this, if that helps you understand it.

_It’s hard not to hate._

The words come off the page in his voice, passionate, and sad, close to the breaking point. _People, things, institutions … when they break your spirit and take pleasure in watching you bleed, hate is the only feeling that makes sense._ Even reading them, knowing he shouldn’t feel exactly what these words are describing, his mind reaches outward to everything he hates: the Sons, the Kings, the guns and the drugs everybody was always saying they’d escape from.

The words ring true. It’s like he’s in the room with him, sitting him down, putting the Presidency aside and being a Father for a while. _I know what hate does to a man. Tears him apart, turns him into something he’s not - something he promised himself he’d never become._ He lips a cigarette from the battered pack sitting on the kitchen table and lights up. It tastes dry, like death, but it brings relief, and some of the tension in his shoulders melts away.

_That’s what I need to tell you._ He grips the little note pad a bit harder, his thumb brushing a dog-eared corner away from the faded writing. _To let you know how hard I’m trying not to cave under the weight of all the awful things I feel in my heart._ His own heart clenches, and suddenly the weight of the gun on his hip is painfully obvious.

_Sometimes my life feels like a deadly balancing act._ On the table, next to the pack of cigarettes: a worn-out photo of two young boys sitting atop a motorcycle, feet swinging, smiles on their faces. _What I feel slamming up against what I should do._ Without thinking, he reaches down and wraps his fingers around the gun’s grip. It’s too comforting. He stares between the photo and the words his Father left behind. _Impulsive reactions racing to solutions miles ahead of my brain._

The blood hasn’t dried yet, not completely. It’s sticky, growing cold against his arm, his wrist, his fingers. He’s rubbed some off on top of what he’s reading. Dark red thumbprints along the edge of the yellowing paper. _When I look at my day, I realize most of it was spent cleaning up the damage of the day before._ In his head, he can see his brother’s face, and the men all around him, all with reapers on their backs. Shouting, cursing. Half-dead with long years of exhaustion and war. He can hear gunshots, feel grief - over and over again, grief for loved ones lost to their cause.

He can still feel the kickback.

_In that life, I have no future._

He takes a deep breath, exhaling a cloud of blue-gray smoke that drifts upward, obscuring his vision.

_All I have is distraction and remorse._

His relief had been short-lived. All he can feel now is old hatred and fatigue.

_I buried my best friend three days ago._ Old hatred manages a tear, a lump in his throat he can’t quite swallow. _As cliché as this sounds, I left a part of me in that box. A part I barely knew._ That was the difference. He'd known that part, for a second. He'd played it well, but he'd never wanted to know it. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? He’d done it to end it all, the chaos, the battle.

_A part I’ll never see again._

He remembered, back when he was a kid, chasing his brother around the Teller-Morrow lot, laughing, playing - innocent. And then Abel had begun Prospecting for the club, and suddenly he wasn’t Abel anymore - he was the rising Son, and eventually the perfect VP to their Father. A true Son of Anarchy. Nobody was surprised when Thomas opted for a badge instead of the Prospect patch. A shield instead of a reaper and an M16.

_Every day is a new box, boys. You open it, you take a look at what’s inside. You’re the one who determines if it’s a gift or a coffin._

Some of that old blood had been in Thomas, after all. He’d gone around the law to put things right. For one moment, beginning with the pull of a trigger and ending with a body on the ground, he had been the son he was always supposed to be. A Man of Mayhem.

He picked up a pen and flipped the page. Every other page was blank. He paused, staring at his bloodied hand, before he began to write:

_It’s hard not to hate. People, things, institutions. People, things, and institutions you were supposed to love. Sometimes it will sit wrong with you, give you that hard feeling in your gut, and you know you’re the only one who can make the change that everybody else is avoiding. I fought for years not to make that choice. It’s not on me, I kept saying, every day, waking up wondering if my brother was alive or dead, if Charming was still a safe place for you. It’s not on me, it’s on … and you can throw the responsibility wherever you want. But in the end, if it’s you, it’s you. And making that call might leave you feeling broken apart. I had to make that move today, J. And it’s going to keep us apart for a long time. But you have Mom, and son, I believe I’ve made this a good home for you. Safer, now, without the club hovering over you and keeping the town in a constant state of back alley warfare._

_I’m sorry, J. Maybe someday you’ll understand. Always know that I love you._

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to play around with Thomas and Abel a bit, and ended up - er - killing Abel off. Using Thomas to do it. Sometimes my mind wanders, and this is where it goes. I decided to use Major Character Death as a warning, though I'm not sure if Abel counts as "Major," exactly.


End file.
